— Nona Parks ~ 1954-1957

1954-1957

What do I remember about those days?

I remember …

** … we got back from our leave at the end of November and I got measured up for my winter uniform and went to Quarry Bay School after the Christmas holidays, on January 11, 1954  ?

For more about my time in QBS, please click HERE.

I remember …

** … that mom flew to San Francisco in January to get her accreditation from Warner’s for “the art of fitting corsets” which, back in the ’50s, was a big deal!  She brought back a lovely cowgirl outfit for me, boots and all!!  Too cool ?

I remember …

** … dad took Lindy and me to the Botanical Gardens and we’re posing like we liked each other ?

 

We weren’t very pally at the time as Lindy used to get mad with me if she’d tell me to do something and I’d refuse, saying I was going to ring mom up to see if I really had to do what she ordered me to do!

She would grab the phone out of my hand and bang it on my head! Sixty five years later, I still am terrified of the phone 😧

The receiver was heavy and hard, and I really didn’t appreciate having it thumped on my head  😠

I remember …

** … Ah Sam, our cookboy, taking me over to Cameron Road for piano and Russian lessons with Balia.

I used to go to learn the piano with a heavy heart as I never really enjoyed playing it, but when it came down to Russian lessons, it was incredible how I could let my lesson go in one ear and out of another.  It must have frustrated my grandmother terribly!  However after the “chores” of the lessons, Balia used to give me food and that was great!

I used to get pocket money from my parents and on the way home to the Star Ferry, I’d go to a Five and Dime store on Nathan Road and buy something for my folks! All very cheesy items which I used to proudly give my parents and which my mother ooohed and aaahed then stuck in the furthest corner of our large pantry, never to see the light of day again 😏

And, of course, learning the piano with Balia meant I had to play in her yearly concerts at the Peninsula!  A truly terrifying experience and it never got easier with time!

There were a number of Russian kids in those group photos, and you can find their names up on the page about Balia’s Concerts ?

 

I remember …

** … going to the Police Recreation Club (PRC) with Ah Sam in the afternoons, getting a coke and plate of French fries with lots of malt vinegar, and sitting in the TV room with other kids to watch shows. Even though it was a British Colony, most of the TV shows were from the States – like “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin“, “The Cisco Kid“, “The Lone Ranger“, “Davy Crockett”, “Hopalong Cassidy” … and the list goes on and on and on! ?

I do admit that I didn’t enjoy watching “Lassie“ though – it always made me cry as it was fairly soppy! ?

Some of the English shows we watched were “The Adventures of Robin Hood“ & “The Adventures of William Tell”.  Not as many shows from England compared to the ones from the States, you can tell, and as most of us young girls there, we were all tomboys and enjoyed playing Cowboys & Indians with the boys ?

 

The PRC’s verandah overlooking the (lawn) bowling green/cricket pitch/tennis courts which happened at various times of the year! You can see our apartment block in the background! ? (Click to enlarge)

The PRC had a slide, roundabout and sandpit in the kids’ play area, on the right hand side as one walked out onto the patio.  When I was all keen on trying out for the school’s track and field team, I used to use the sandpit as a long jump pitch! I remember practising my long jump but there was a jagged piece of glass in the sandpit and, ooopsie, the glass managed to cut me just below the elbow, and I still have the scar today ?

Ah Sam was not happy with me as he had to take me home with blood streaming down my forearm!  ?

Me on the slide at the Police Club (Click to enlarge)

I remember …

**…there used to be what we thought were big, fat earthworms in the drains which were against the Football Club wall. I now know they weren’t big worms but were Common Blind Snakes (aka Flowerpot Snake)! Not poisonous at all ?

Click to enlarge

Some kids used to be so cruel – cutting them in half to see them wriggle in pain.  Awful ?   I was just as bad – I didn’t cut them but I used to watch the other kids doing that and didn’t say anything to stop them!

But speaking of worms, we had a silly ditty which we used to laugh about and sing just for the heck of it …

Nobody loves me
Everybody hates me
I think I’ll go eat worms
Big fat long ones
Teeny weeny skinny ones
See them wiggle and squirm!
I’d bite off their heads
And suck up their juice
And throw their skins away
Everybody wonders how I do it
Once three times a day!

How silly was that ditty? ?

** …and here’s another one we used to chant but I truly cannot remember when we used to do that, or why!  There were two versions, for obvious reasons – heh heh – but I have no idea where they originated from! ?

Fatty boom banana
Had a skinny amah
Amah died
Fatty cried
Fatty boom banana

Skinny boom banana
Had a fatty amah
Amah died
Skinny cried
Skinny boom banana

**…if someone would be rude to me or my friends, our quick reply was …

“Sticks and stones my break my bones but names will never hurt me!”

Haw haw haw! As if ……!  I used to get very hurt if people called me names ?

 

 

** …and another way we used to settle arguments, or decided who was going to be top dog for any games we were going to play (eg was for two of us to play «Stone Paper Scissors»!

It surprised me to know that this game has been called «Rock Paper Scissor» and «Paper Scissors Stone» as I had assumed that this game was the way we said it – the other versions sound so wrong when I said them!

They are all wrong and our way of saying it was right!!!  LOL

I remember …

**… being punished by my father if I did something exceptionally naughty and that would mean having my bottom smacked by his police belt!  Oooh it was a very unpleasant experience but a good way to make sure that I didn’t misbehave badly ?

However for small misdemeanors, I used to be put in the corner and would have to stand there for as long as my mother thought was necessary for me to learn my lesson!!

 

I remember …

** … having a huge crush on a boy at QBS called Gordon Reynolds and he came to my 7th birthday at the PRC, much to my delight!  I’ve since found out he was 2 years older than me so not a classmate! I wonder how we made friends ?‍♀️

My best friend at the time, Bunny Smith, also came along, as did my cousin Chucha, Nick Vargassoff and a bunch of other kids from QBS  ?

L-R: Marilyn, Diana, Janet with Chucha, Bunny, me, Nick Vargassoff, Gordon Reynolds and Roy, Iain & Murray Macdonald – the 3 brothers.   (Click to enlarge)

 

The above photo was taken on the grounds of the PRC – tennis courts in the background.  Back in those days the tennis “courts” were made up of two canvas ‘backs’ which the club boys put up if people wanted to play.

They weren’t permanent because the grounds would also be used for cricket matches so everything was pop up rather than permanent ?

Janet, me with Chucha, and Gordon Reynolds (Click to enlarge)

Stuffing my face full of cake ? (Click to enlarge)

 

I remember …

** … joining the Brownies and going to meetings but I really didn’t enjoy the experience and so quit after a few months. What a wimp 🙁 However I did help plant the coconut – by my left leg – which sprouted and grew into a large palm!

I remember …

** … because I was so tall for my age, I used to beat all my classmates in the school sports’ races! I collected a number of silver cups during my years at QBS for coming first in the running races!

I remember …

** … Ah Pah, my amah, had a daughter and we were good friends. Sadly I can’t remember her name but we used to wander down Tin Lok Lane where there was a comic swap place in a doorway to the flats (could even be the doorway behind us in the photo!). Talk about entrepreneurial!! It was a small entrance way and the guy had set up a skinny table in the alcove and we used to go with our old comics, and swap them for new ones! We were the same age but certainly not the same size ?

I remember …

**…every school holiday I used to feel sick waiting for my report to come from school! The mailman used to shove the mail under the front door and if I saw this envelope in the pile …

 

I would hyperventilate until my parents came home and read the report.  It was only after they looked like they were happy with my grades that I calmed down! ?  Talk about wimp!!!!  ?

I remember …

We became members of the United Services Recreation Club (USRC) which was situated at 1 Gascoigne Road, Kowloon.  I used to love going there as they had the best Chinese chow which we could eat by the pool, and also they didn’t make women use bathing caps, like the LRC!

No doubt we were allowed to join the club as mom was an active member of the HKVDC at the time.

We weren’t members there for long – just a few years – and I think that was because it was a big trip from Hong Kong to go over there (by car ferry) ?

The photo below shows the family, with Balia, enjoying the sunshine by the pool!

 

Another club we went to quite a bit was the Victoria Recreation Club (VRC) which was in Deep Water Bay. It wasn’t a place to go to eat – as I remember it was very basic and used mainly by those who wanted to row the skiffs that were there. Still, it was good to be able to go for a swim and then have a shower and dry out before returning home in the car.

There was an SCMP long reads about clubs in HK but quite a lot about the VRC …

Hong Kong’s ‘recreational clubs’ are remnants of its colonial past; what does that mean for their future?

 

Food, Glorious Food…. ?

I remember…

**… our cookboy, Ah Sam, was a really great cook! He was Shanghainese so his Chinese chow featured dishes from his hometown, and he also made some really spicy Szechuan dishes which we all loved.  He also made great European dishes – he really was an all-time great all-rounder!

I remember my mother telling me that all the expat ladies more or less knew who the good cookboys were and some ladies weren’t adverse to poaching someone’s cook! Sneaky, eh wot!  ?

However I must say that both my mother and grandmother were fabulous cooks too. As I already mentioned above, I used to go to Balia’s and she’d give me lots of yummy dishes to eat after my piano lessons … blinchiki piroshki, piroshki, mazurka, and a wonderful “cake” made from blini and the same meat for piroshki.

 

I remember …

**… when I used to go out with Ah Sam being allowed to have food from the sidewalk sellers! I loved the bright red squid that they cooked and stuck on toothpicks. What was the red – some sort of bright red dye of sorts?! I honestly don’t know, but it didn’t cause any problems to my digestive system or stunt my growth ?

Another street food I used to enjoy eating was youtiao, fried sticks of dough! They were really delicious if eaten when they were just fried but the ones that had cooled off weren’t very appetising ?

I’d get wah muis and other goodies and in winter time there’d be the chestnut sellers. They’d had great big portable woks which were extremely hot and they’d stir-fry the chestnuts then scoop some up and place them in a paper bag for me. The smell was to die for but I do confess that if I ate a chestnut which was off, it was pretty yukky ?

CHESTNUTS!!! ?

And sugar cane! Can you imagine what it did to our teeth? There would be outdoor sellers with a big piles of sugar cane so you bought one and carried on walking chewing and sucking on the cane stick. God ?

Sugar cane for sale (© Asia Museum) (Click to enlarge)

 

I remember …

Thanks to chewing on the sugar cane I had to go and see our dentist quite often! Our dentist was Doctor Staples and his clinic was in Gloucester Building. He was an ex-RN officer and when I went into the “torture chamber”, he’d be sitting on his swivel stool, an unlit pipe clamped between his teeth and his mask hanging around under his chin!

This old photo reminds me of his clinic …

Despite his gruffness, he was a great dentist and I must say he made my teeth all good!  My laterial incisors (on either side of my two front teeth) needed to be pulled forward to align with my front teeth so my parents ordered Staples to make braces, not cemented to my teeth, just plates that I had to put in at nights.

You can see in this photo how it looks like I only had my two front teeth ?

I used to put my plate in religiously to straighten my left side but when I had to put my plate in for my right side, I got pretty slack and even though it was obviously that my right laterial incisor didn’t align with my front tooth, I still maintained I was using the plate every night!

Ooops! Big lie! ?‍♀️

 

 

 

I remember …

**…mom used to make soup with chicken gizzards. A gizzard is a tough muscle that’s part of the digestive tract of a chicken and is called “pupok” (пупок) in Russian. They were really great to eat, very chewy!

I loved eating them but when I gave the same soup to my children and husband years later, I got the thumbs down from them! Boo hoo ?

A plate of pelimeni! Photo credit : Russia travel guide

I used to love it when Balia came over and with mom we’d sit down and make pelimeni!  Balia was good with dough, something I didn’t inherit alas; she’d roll out this enormous thin sheet of dough on our dining table, then we’d cut a circle out with vodka glasses, fill the circle with a small amount of filling (a mixture of pork and beef minced in the grinder, chopped onion, garlic, salt and pepper) then seal the ends into a semi-circle and then join the two ends.

We’d make a lot of dumplings and then freeze them, having two large fridges in the flat, but would certainly have pelimeni that evening for dinner. Mom would boil the dumplings in broth and then we’d add a mixture of English mustard and white wine vinegar into the soup.  Absolutely brilliant!

If we had any leftover pelmeni the next day, we’d fry them in butter then eat them with soya sprinkled over them! YUM! Delicious!!!  ?

 

We got back from leave in November 1957 and the next month I had to go into Matilda Hospital to get my appendix out! It had been bothering me while we were on the Continent and back in HK the doctor confirmed appendicitis ?

Balia, Sashka, me, Lindy and mom in my room at the Matilda Click to enlarge

1954-1955 Nona - Hong Kong

Photos of my family, me and my friends during 1954 &1955 🙂 I wanted to put everything into a photo album dated 1954-57 but there were too many photos so I had to split them up!

Slideshow

View 114 photos

1956-1957 Nona - Hong Kong

This album has photos taken in 1956 and also pictures taken before our 2nd leave and then when we got back in November 1957 🙂

Slideshow

View 45 photos

This brilliant video shows car going onto the vehicular ferry so that you have an idea of what it was like back in the old days ?

And here’s another great video showing the car ferry disgorging its vehicles on HK-side, amongst other things

There is a lot of interesting information in this article about the Peak Tram, for those of you who would like to know more:

HKFP History: A brief visual history of Hong Kong’s Peak Tram

And those of you who prefer to watch videos, this should make you all happy 😉

https://hongkongfp.com/2015/11/13/hkfp-history-a-brief-visual-history-of-the-peak-tram/

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